1. Field Of The Invention
The invention herein pertains to an attachment for a hospital bed to assist patient care personnel with the lifting and turning of bedridden patients to prevent bedsores and other ailments from occuring which arise from prolonged inactivity while in contact with bed surfaces.
2. Description Of The Prior Art And Objectives Of The Invention
By utilizing improved health care procedures in recent years, hospital and nursing homes have increased the life span of patients and consequently the number of patients that are bedridden and which remain inactive for extended periods of time. Some of these patients have lung and chest infections and accordingly must be turned in their beds periodically to help prevent the possibility of developing pneumonia and other serious lung related diseases. Additionally, some bedridden patients are prone to develop bed sores and other painful skin conditions if they are not "turned" periodically. Nurses and other medical personnel are generally used to lift and turn such patients but with the rising cost of labor, hospitals have become increasingly sensitive to such expenses and other means are being sought to reduce operating and personnel costs. Also, with large adult patients, hospitals risk muscle, back and other injuries to their employees when attempts are made to lift and turn heavy bedridden patients and accordingly the present invention was conceived with one of its objectives being to provide a bed to eliminate medical personnel from having to manually lift and turn bedridden patients.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a device which will attach to conventional hospital beds for automatically turning patients as required.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide a device which can move the patient from one side of the bed to the other as needed for feeding, treatment administration or otherwise.
It is also another objective of the present invention to provide a device which is relatively simple to install and which can be used for automatically lifting and turning a patient by a single hospital employee.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a device which includes hand and foot controls for simplicity in operation.
Various other objectives and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed explanation of the invention is presented below.